Edge placement / Key Combo idea

[manic232]

Edge placement / Key Combo idea

Absolutely love this application, so useful and far better than all other clipboard apps I have tried. I wonder please if it may be possible to implement a few new features in a future update?

1. Would be great if it was possible to have option to change edge placement to top or bottom of the screen.
2. The Alt+C activation is great, would it be possible to have the app take focus when this key combo is pressed and then allow up/down arrows to select desired item and then have the enter key paste it into the last focused window?

These two additional features would be the icing on the cake for me.

Thank you for your consideration.

[Deepender25]

@manic232 thanks for your kind words first
"Would be great if it was possible to have option to change edge placement to top or bottom of the screen." it is already a feature in the application in the position section
second i will look into this and try to implement it .

[manic232]

Forgive me for being dim, but under the edge placement section in settings I am only seeing left or right as an option, am I looking in the wrong place? I am using v0.2.9

[Deepender25]

@manic232 i am sorry i misunderstood the request you meant to put the whole clipboard on the top or bottom edge and i thought you are talking about moving the clipboard up and down.
and i will be looking into this in the future updates

[manic232]

No my fault for not explaining properly. Thank you very much for your reply and agreeing to look intro my change requests, it is appreciated.

All the best.

[Droyk]

@Deepender25 I was going to create a new FR but thought to add my request here since it is pretty much similar!
My idea is to open the manager just beside the cursor instead of the edge! & one can open it via LMB/RMB/Mdl mouse button hold! the manager should be movable window. to close the window there should be 2 options either to close it via clicking on the background i.e. outside of the manager window & via hitting ESC.

[Deepender25]

@Droyk If I have to be completely honest, what you’re suggesting is going in a completely different direction from what I originally imagined for EdgeDrop.

The whole idea behind EdgeDrop is for it to stay on the edge of the screen. Making it movable would change the overall goal and aesthetic of the application. It’s also a unique part of what makes EdgeDrop different. Making it movable would require a lot of iterations and time, and it would move the application away from the original idea I had in mind.

That said, EdgeDrop is open source, so anyone is free to change the application however they want. That’s actually one of the main reasons I built it with Electron. Electron is widely used, and people can work with TypeScript more easily than with something like WinUI 3 or other native Windows frameworks.

My goal was to make EdgeDrop easy for the open-source community to access and customize. If you like the idea of making it movable, you can change it yourself. If you can’t, maybe in the future, when I have some free time, I can create a special iteration based on what you’re suggesting.

But to be straightforward, I wouldn’t be able to maintain a separate version alongside the ongoing development of EdgeDrop.
in simple words the special request version will stay at the point it will be created and as a student it is not possible for me to maintain and give the same features to this special version.
Hope you Understand.
and you can create new issue's if you want that not a problem that it the benefit of open-source and it advances on the feedback of the community

[Droyk]

@Deepender25 I completely understand your point about not wanting to turn EdgeDrop into something fundamentally different, and I’m not suggesting that the current edge-based behavior should be removed or replaced.

What I was actually proposing is more of an alternative interaction mode rather than a redesign of EdgeDrop.

The core idea of EdgeDrop would remain exactly the same: it would still be an edge-based clipboard manager, and the edge could still be used as the place from which it is activated. The difference would simply be an alternative how to activate & where the expanded manager is displayed after activation.

That way, someone who likes the original EdgeDrop concept loses nothing, while someone who wants a conventional floating clipboard manager gets a different way of interacting with the same application.

I also think there is a bigger point worth considering regarding the name "EdgeDrop."

I don't think the project should necessarily allow its name to become a restriction on what the application is capable of becoming.

The name describes the application's original interaction model, but it doesn't have to define every interaction model the application can support forever. If a feature is genuinely useful and can coexist with the original behavior, I don't think it makes sense to reject it primarily because it doesn't fit the literal meaning of the name.

In fact, if the project is going to continue evolving through community feedback, it may be worth considering whether the project should eventually adopt a broader name that describes what the application actually is, rather than where its original panel happened to live.

For example, if the application can support both an edge-attached manager and a cursor-attached/movable manager, something along the lines of: DropHub, ClipFlow, etc
I'm not saying the project has to be renamed to one of these names. The broader point is that the name should follow the application's capabilities, rather than the application's capabilities being permanently constrained by its original name.

So I would look at this less as:

"Should EdgeDrop stop being EdgeDrop?"

and more as:

"Should EdgeDrop remain edge-only forever, or should the project evolve into a more robust clipboard manager that happens to retain its original edge mode?"

My preference is the latter.

And importantly, I completely understand that you're a student and cannot realistically maintain a second permanently divergent version of the application. I'm not asking you to commit to maintaining two separate products.

I'm suggesting that the main project itself could evolve toward a broader interaction model, with the original edge behavior preserved as the default or as one selectable mode.

That would also mean future community contributions aren't forced to ask whether every useful feature is "EdgeDrop enough" simply because of the project's original name.

If you ultimately want EdgeDrop to remain specifically an edge-based application, that's of course your decision as the maintainer. But in that case, I would argue that the limitation is a product-direction decision, rather than a technical necessity or something inherently incompatible with the existing architecture.

P.S. In fact, I wouldn't realistically be able to maintain a fork either, as my JavaScript/TypeScript knowledge is still limited. That's why I'm raising this as a feature request rather than simply forking the project. I can describe the functionality I want, but I don't currently have the technical ability to implement and maintain it myself.

[Deepender25]

@Droyk I completely understand what you mean, and honestly, I think your suggestion makes sense from a usability perspective.

I think where we differ is more in the product direction than the technical side. For me, the edge-based interaction isn’t just where the clipboard happens to be placed it’s the core idea behind EdgeDrop. The whole reason I started building it was to experiment with a clipboard that is always available at the edge of your screen without behaving like another normal floating window.

EdgeDrop actually started as a personal project because I wanted something like this for my own use. It unexpectedly started getting some attention, and now I’m continuing to maintain and improve it based on the feedback I’m getting from people using it.

That’s also why I’m a little hesitant about making a movable/floating mode part of the main project right now. Once I start adding completely different interaction models, I feel like I could gradually move away from the experience I originally wanted EdgeDrop to have.

That being said, I’m definitely not against the idea itself. I can see how having both modes could be useful, and I wouldn’t rule out exploring the floating direction in the future. I just don’t think it’s something I want to commit to right now.

I’m also a B.Tech student and building this as a solo developer, so I have to be realistic about what I can develop and maintain. But honestly, I don’t see that as a bad thing. Even if EdgeDrop started as a small personal project, it’s now helping me build a portfolio, learn a lot, and, probably most importantly, build a community around something I created.

So for now, I’d like to keep EdgeDrop focused on its original idea while continuing to improve it based on community feedback. And who knows maybe the floating direction will make sense for EdgeDrop somewhere down the road.

I really appreciate you taking the time to explain your idea in detail, though. This is exactly the kind of discussion I hoped having EdgeDrop open source would lead to.

[manic232]

I see you have now implemented the top edge activation option, great work, thanks so much for doing that. I love what you have done.

[Deepender25]

@manic232 happy to hear you liked the update